Why Orthodox Christians Venerate Relics: The Bible, the Martyrs and the Body

Walk into an Orthodox church on the feast of a saint and you may see people line up to kiss a small reliquary or a casket, bow before it and make the sign of the Cross. A visitor raised in another tradition often asks three things. Is this in the Bible? Are the bones of the dead meant to heal people? And does the Church ask us to believe in every relic that was ever shown to a pilgrim?

Relics are mentioned all through this library, but nowhere explained. Our articles on praying to the saints and icons in the early Church cover the saints themselves, and why the body matters supplies the doctrine. This article joins them by explaining the practice, with the evidence, the abuses and the Church's own cautions.

In brief

Orthodox Christians venerate the bodies of the saints, and objects that touched them, because the Word became flesh, the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and the body will be raised. Scripture shows God working through bones (2 Kings 13:21), garments (Matthew 9:20-22) and cloths from Paul's body (Acts 19:11-12), though it nowhere commands the practice. The earliest Christian account of it is the Martyrdom of Polycarp, usually dated to the middle of the second century, where the believers gather his bones as "more valuable than precious stones." In the early fifth century Jerome answered a critic, Vigilantius, who called it idolatry, and the Second Council of Nicaea (787) required relics in consecrated churches. The Church does not teach that relics must be incorrupt, that they guarantee miracles, or that every relic shown in history is authentic; she has warned against fraud for sixteen centuries. The practice has been abused, and Calvin's attack on the relic trade of his day targets abuses the Church's own canons had condemned, but his conclusion does not follow.

Thesis: veneration of relics is the Church's honor for the bodies of those who belong to Christ, grounded in the Incarnation and the resurrection of the body; it is veneration, not worship, and abuses of it do not refute it.

What is meant, and what is not

A relic is a remnant of a saint: the body or bones (first-class relics), or something the saint wore or touched (garments, chains, oil from the lamp at the tomb). In the Orthodox Church relics are kept in reliquaries and in the altar. When a church is consecrated, the bishop places relics in the holy table, and the antimension (the cloth on which the Liturgy is celebrated) also contains relics; the details of practice vary between jurisdictions.¹

Three clarifications keep the practice in proportion. The Church honors (proskynesis) and does not worship (latreia); the Second Council of Nicaea draws this line for images, "not indeed that true worship of faith ... which pertains alone to the divine nature," and the same distinction governs relics.² God, not the bone, is the source of any grace. And relics are not magic: the Church's concern is the saint and the God who glorifies him.

Why matter can carry grace

The root is not a love of old objects. It is the Incarnation. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). God took a body and saved by it, and so matter is not an obstacle to Him. Paul tells the Corinthians that "your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you" (1 Corinthians 6:19), and promises that God "shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit" (Romans 8:11). What the Spirit has dwelt in, the Church honors even after death, because the body is waiting for resurrection (see why Christians believe in bodily resurrection and Paul's teaching on the spiritual body).

St John of Damascus states the argument as the Church received it. Under the Law, "every one who touches a dead body was considered impure" (Numbers 19:11), "but these are not dead," because since Christ was reckoned among the dead "we do not call those dead who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection." He also says: "The Master Christ made the remains of the saints to be fountains of salvation to us."³ Our Lord Himself said that God "is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him" (Luke 20:38).

What Scripture shows

Scripture does not contain a command to venerate relics, and this article does not claim it does. What it contains is a pattern in which God acts through the physical remains and belongings of His servants.

• Elisha's bones. "As they were burying a man ... they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet" (2 Kings 13:21). The Septuagint's Sirach adds that of Elisha "after his death his body prophesied" (Sirach 48:13, Brenton).
• Joseph's bones. Joseph "took an oath of the children of Israel" that they would carry up his bones (Genesis 50:25), Moses did so (Exodus 13:19), and Hebrews lists it among his acts of faith: "gave commandment concerning his bones" (Hebrews 11:22). In 2 Kings 23:18 Josiah says of a prophet's tomb, "let no man move his bones."
• Garments. The woman with the issue of blood touched "the hem of his garment" and was made whole (Matthew 9:20-22), and others "besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment" (Mark 6:56).
• The apostles. "God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul: So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them" (Acts 19:11-12). People laid the sick where "the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them" (Acts 5:15).
• The altar. John sees "under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God" (Revelation 6:9). When St Ambrose laid the bodies of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius in his new church in Milan, he used the same picture: "He upon the altar, Who suffered for all; they beneath the altar, who were redeemed by His Passion." That is an image behind the custom, not a command.⁴

{{strong: Scripture shows God working through bones, garments and objects associated with His servants, which grounds relic veneration in biblical practice without commanding it.}} Protestant readers often reply that the miracles are God's act through the one touched, not a standing instruction. That is correct as far as it goes. The Church's answer is that the pattern, together with the Incarnation, is the reason the practice arose and was never thought idolatrous in the first Christian centuries.

The earliest evidence

The Martyrdom of Polycarp describes the death of the bishop of Smyrna and is usually dated to the middle of the second century.⁵ It already draws the line between worship and honor: "For Him, being the Son of God, we adore, but the martyrs as disciples and imitators of the Lord we cherish as they deserve for their matchless affection towards their own King and Teacher." Then: "we afterwards took up his bones which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place; where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together ... to celebrate the birth-day of his martyrdom." The Church's keeping of the day of a martyr's death as his heavenly birthday is already attested here.

By the fourth century the evidence is plentiful. Augustine tells how God showed Ambrose of Milan in a vision the spot "where lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs," and reports that a man blind for years touched "the bier of Your saints" with his handkerchief and "they were immediately opened."⁶ In The City of God he lists healings connected with the relics of St Stephen in North Africa.⁷ These are reports by a contemporary bishop, not independently verifiable events, and they should be described that way. They show that the practice, and the expectation of grace through it, were already established.

The councils soon legislated. A North African council of 401 ordered that altars set up "in which no body nor reliques of martyrs can be proved to have been laid up" be overturned, and said "no memory of martyrs should at all be accepted, unless where there is found the body or some reliques."⁸ The same canon also disapproves altars set up because of "inane quasi-revelations," so the earliest rule about relics is also a rule against fraud. At Nicaea II (787), Canon 7 decreed that "relics shall be placed with the accustomed service in as many of the sacred temples as have been consecrated without the relics of the Martyrs," and that a bishop who consecrates a temple without holy relics "shall be deposed."⁹ The council calls these customs it must "now revive and maintain," which is why Orthodox churches still hold to it.

The objections at full strength

Vigilantius: this is idolatry

About AD 404 Jerome was told that Vigilantius, a priest in Gaul, was attacking the cult of relics and calling its practitioners "ashmongers and idolaters who pay homage to dead men's bones." Jerome's answer is the classic Orthodox one: "We, it is true, refuse to worship or adore, I say not the relics of the martyrs, but even the sun and moon, the angels and archangels ... Still we honour the relics of the martyrs, that we may adore Him whose martyrs they are." He asks whether the relics of Peter and Paul are unclean. In his fuller treatise Against Vigilantius (406) he notes that the bishop of Rome offers the sacrifice over the bones of Peter and Paul and judges "their tombs worthy to be Christ's altars."¹⁰ The distinction between honoring and worshipping is made explicit here, and it is the one the Church still makes.

Calvin: relics are a fraud

John Calvin's Treatise on Relics (1543) is the strongest Protestant statement. It does not argue from a single text. It collects the relic trade of his day and asks whether it can be believed. "The whole body of St Stephen is at Rome, his head is at Arles, and his bones are in more than three hundred places." In Geneva, he writes, "there was formerly, it is said, an arm of St Anthony; it was kissed and worshipped as long as it remained in its shrine; but when it was turned out and examined, it was found to be the bone of a stag."¹¹ The charge is that a practice which began with the honest gathering of a martyr's bones ended in the sale of animal bones and the multiplication of single bodies.

The Orthodox reply has two parts. First, concede what is true. The same tradition that honors relics also warned against false ones: the African canon of 401 required that a relic be "proved," and the Orthodox Church still treats a body found whole with caution (see below). The sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 shows how relics could become plunder: Pope Innocent III wrote angrily to his legate that the crusaders "laid their hands on the treasures of the churches" and "carried off crosses and relics," and it remains a wound in the memory of the East (see the sack of Constantinople).¹² Second, deny the conclusion. That some relics are false is no argument that the practice is false, any more than forged icons make icons idols. Fraud is an abuse of something real, and the early evidence is not about relic merchants but about Polycarp's bones.

St Antony: do not keep my body

The most interesting patristic evidence on the other side is St Athanasius's Life of Antony. Antony objected to the Egyptian custom of keeping the bodies of the dead, even martyrs, wrapped in linen and "in their houses," and taught that "this thing was neither lawful nor holy at all." Before dying he ordered his disciples: "suffer no one to take my body into Egypt, lest haply they place me in the houses ... Bury my body, therefore, and hide it underground yourselves." They obeyed, and Athanasius writes that "no one knows to this day where it was buried." But in the same chapter he reports that those who received Antony's sheepskin and garment guarded it "as a precious treasure."¹³ So the Life records both a saint's wish for a hidden grave and the veneration of what he wore. Antony's rule was about burial, not about the Church's practice of honoring the martyrs' tombs, and the Church has never required that a saint's body be dug up or displayed.

{{strong: Veneration of relics was an established, widely attested practice by the fourth century and has attestation in the mid-second century (Polycarp); the Church's theology of it was articulated against Vigilantius and again at Nicaea II.}}

What the Church does not claim

Incorruption is not required. Many relics are bones. A publication of the St Elisabeth Convent in Minsk (Belarusian Orthodox Church) notes: "Most of the saints whom we venerate today left behind them only dust and bones." It adds that "many cases are known when the church did not canonize the people whose incorruptible relics were discovered." Fr Joseph Frawley, a member of the Orthodox Church in America's canonization commission, states what the Church does look for: "What is required is a virtuous life of obvious holiness."¹⁴ The Church canonizes on the basis of faith, life and witness, as our article on how someone becomes a saint explains.

Relics do not guarantee miracles. The Church reports healings associated with relics, and Augustine and John of Damascus did the same, but she does not promise a miracle to any pilgrim, and miracle accounts are reports, not articles of faith.

No single relic is a dogma. The authenticity of a given bone is a historical question. The canons just cited favor caution, and the Church can and does admit that some traditions about particular relics are doubtful. Veneration is directed to the saint, who is known by faith, not to a verified fragment.

What we can say confidently

• Scripture records God working through the bones, garments and belongings of His servants (2 Kings 13:21; Matthew 9:20-22; Acts 19:11-12), though it contains no command to venerate relics.
• The Martyrdom of Polycarp, usually dated to the mid-second century, records Christians gathering a martyr's bones and honoring them without worshipping him.
• By the early fifth century relics were widely honored in East and West, and Jerome answered the charge of idolatry by distinguishing honor from worship.
• Councils in 401 (North Africa) and 787 (Nicaea II) regulated relics, the first requiring that they be proved, the second requiring them in consecrated churches.
• The Orthodox Church does not require incorruption, does not promise miracles, and does not treat the authenticity of any given relic as dogma.
• The relic trade of the Middle Ages included forgeries and looting, and the 1204 sack of Constantinople was one of its worst episodes.

What remains disputed

• How early and how widely the veneration of martyrs' bones was practiced in the second and third centuries, since the Martyrdom of Polycarp is our main early witness and its text history is debated.
• The authenticity of many individual relics, ancient and medieval.
• How much weight to give the reports of healings at the tombs of martyrs, which come from contemporaries but cannot be checked.
• Whether the Egyptian monastic reluctance (Antony) reflects a wider early ambivalence or only a local custom of keeping the dead in houses.

Conclusion

The Church kisses the bones of the saints for the same reason she kisses the Gospel book and the icon: God became flesh, and what He has sanctified He does not despise. The saints' bodies lie in hope of the resurrection, and the Church keeps them as the Israelites carried Joseph's bones, in faith that God "will surely visit you." The practice has been abused, and the Church's own councils said so. It stands on the Incarnation, on the hope of the resurrection and on a witness that begins with Polycarp's bones. For the doctrine behind it, see why the body matters in Christianity, and for the larger picture, Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Orthodox practice: Archbishop Alexei of Sitka and Alaska (Orthodox Church in America), "Relics are the living heart of the church's altar and Liturgy," OrthoChristian.com, March 6, 2026, https://orthochristian.com/176158.html (relics placed by the bishop in the holy table at consecration; the antimension "also contains relics"). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (1769 text) as served by this site's Bible reader (https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/texts?v=kjv), and Sirach from Brenton's Septuagint translation (v=brenton), both checked 2026-11-06.
2. Second Council of Nicaea (787), the Decree, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm. The decree speaks of images; I apply the same distinction to relics, as the Church does.
3. St John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.15, trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, NPNF2 vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33044.htm.
4. St Ambrose, Letter 22 (to his sister Marcellina) 13, trans. H. de Romestin, E. de Romestin and H. T. F. Duckworth, NPNF2 vol. 10, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/340922.htm.
5. Martyrdom of Polycarp 17.3 and 18.2-3, trans. J. B. Lightfoot, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/martyrdompolycarp-lightfoot.html; the mid-second-century date (150-160 AD) is given in "Relic," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic, and the dating table at earlychristianwritings.com (150-160). I did not open the critical editions on its text history.
6. St Augustine, Confessions 9.7, trans. J. G. Pilkington, NPNF1 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110109.htm.
7. St Augustine, The City of God 22.8, trans. Marcus Dods, NPNF1 vol. 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120122.htm.
8. Code of Canons of the African Church, Canon 83 (Carthage, 401; Greek 86), in NPNF2 vol. 14, https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214/npnf214.xv.iv.iv.lxxxiv.html.
9. Second Council of Nicaea, Canon 7, trans. Henry Percival, as in note 2.
10. St Jerome, Letter 109 (to Riparius) and Against Vigilantius 8, trans. W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W. G. Martley, NPNF2 vol. 6, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001109.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm. The NPNF editor dates Letter 109 to AD 404 and says the work of Vigilantius answered in Against Vigilantius reached Jerome in 406. The remark about the bishop of Rome is in Against Vigilantius 8; the other quotations are from Letter 109.
11. John Calvin, A Treatise on Relics, trans. Count Valerian Krasinski (Edinburgh, 1854), Project Gutenberg ebook 32136, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32136, sections "St Stephen" and the discussion of the relics at Geneva.
12. Pope Innocent III, letter to Peter, Cardinal Priest of St Marcellus, papal legate (Ep. 136, PL 215), trans. James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History (Milwaukee, 1962), pp. 208-209, in the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/1204innocent.asp.
13. St Athanasius, Life of Antony 90-92, trans. Archibald Robertson, NPNF2 vol. 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm.
14. Anastasia Parkhomchik, "Why the Incorruptible Body Is Not Necessarily a Sign of Holiness and Other Questions about the Holy Relics," The Catalog of Good Deeds (St Elisabeth Convent, Minsk), March 2021, https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2021/03/why-the-incorruptible-body-is-not-necessarily-a-sign-of-holiness-and-other-questions-about-the-holy-relics; Fr Joseph Frawley, "The Glorification of the Saints in the Orthodox Church," Orthodox Church in America (first published in The Orthodox Church, April-May 2000), https://www.oca.org/fs/glorification-of-saints.

Bibliography

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1769 text); Brenton, The Septuagint with Apocrypha.

Early Christian sources

• Martyrdom of Polycarp, trans. Lightfoot.
• Athanasius of Alexandria. Life of Antony. NPNF2 vol. 4.
• Ambrose of Milan. Letter 22. NPNF2 vol. 10.
• Jerome. Letter 109; Against Vigilantius. NPNF2 vol. 6.
• Augustine of Hippo. Confessions 9; City of God 22. NPNF1 vols. 1-2.
• Code of Canons of the African Church (401); Second Council of Nicaea (787). NPNF2 vol. 14.
• John of Damascus. Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. NPNF2 vol. 9.

Orthodox and Protestant voices

• Archbishop Alexei of Sitka and Alaska (OCA), on relics in the holy table; Fr Joseph Frawley, "The Glorification of the Saints in the Orthodox Church" (OCA); St Elisabeth Convent, Minsk, on incorrupt relics.
• Calvin, John. A Treatise on Relics, trans. Krasinski.
• Innocent III, letter to his legate on the sack of Constantinople, trans. Brundage.